SLC Punk!

In yet another strange confluence of filmdom’s lines of force, one of the more notable recent video releases also deals with antisocial behavior and speaking directly to the camera. Matthew Lillard, who prior to this has frequently played slimy, smarmy weasels you’d happily see garroted (Scream, She’s All That, Wing Commander, for starters...), finally finds a role that works for him. In SLC Punk!, the latest film from director James Merendino (but the first his ten or so that many are likely to remember), he plays a blue-haired (as in, hue, not age), pre-law, 4.0, anarchist college graduate named Steve-O in, of all places, the seat of American arch-conservatism, Salt Lake City, Utah.

It’s the fall of 1985, and the most destructive thing he and his mohawked roommate Bob (Michael A. Goorjian, from “Party of Five”) can conceive of is “to do absolutely nothing with our educated minds.” So they set out on a concerted campaign to party themselves senseless and battle rednecks, “our mortal enemies -- worse than mods, worse than rockers, worse than posers.” Meanwhile Steve-O is under considerable pressure to attend Harvard Law, the alma mater of his ex-hippy sellout father (Christopher McDonald), but he’ll have none of it: “Harvard? I wouldn’t go there unless it was to set it on fire.”

SLC Punk! wanders around a good bit on the way to becoming something like an Americanized Trainspotting, but with better transcripts. There are a couple overly artsy, obtuse acid-trip sequences, but along the way we meet some colorful, interesting characters, and are treated to several sincere rants concerning the importance of nonconformity when faced with such daunting Osmond odds. Lillard delivers the majority of these spews with a casual familiarity that makes me think his career would be a lot more viable than the anarchistic lifestyle he’s portraying if he’d just find more suitable roles. C+

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